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Help The C Is for Crank Expand!

I’m going to be taking a short break from The C Is for Crank to visit with family over the Thanksgiving holiday and, in early December, to travel down to San Francisco to tour that city’s Navigation Center—a low-barrier shelter for the homeless that will serve as the model for Seattle’s own Navigation Center, to be built and run by the Downtown Emergency Service Center.

In the coming year, I’m going to be dedicating more of my time to The C Is for Crank and other writing projects, which means, among other things, that I’ll be going part-time at my regular day job to dedicate more time to reporting and writing here. To do that, though, I need your help. Your sustaining monthly contributions are the way I pay for this work—this site has no advertising, grant funding, or major investors, so your contributions are what pay for my time, travel costs when I take reporting trips to places like San Francisco and Vancouver, B.C., equipment (like a small digital camera and the Macbook I’m writing these words on now), and the many other expenses that go into producing stories on this site. Stories like these:

With Transitional Housing Under Fire, Rapid Rehousing Remains Unproven, a deep dive into the potential pitfalls of Mayor Murray’s proposal to redirect spending on homelessness toward short-term vouchers for housing on the private market. In this piece, I talk to proponents and opponents of so-called “rapid rehousing,” and explore the ways in which transitional housing, which includes sober “recovery housing” and housing for domestic violence victims, is at risk.

Citing “Competitiveness,” City to Raise New SPU Director’s Pay—Even Though They’ve Already Hired Her, the first and only in-depth story about the city council’s decision to grant the new Seattle Public Utilities Director a raise of up to 67 percent over her predecessor, making her one of the highest-paid employees in the city. The mayor’s office of Finance and Administrative Services claimed they needed to offer the huge pay hike to attract good candidates—even though they had already hired the new director, Mami Hara, at a much lower salary.

At a time when the mainstream media are producing carbon-copy stories filled with false neutrality, and when the alternative media veers too often into political propaganda uninformed by talking to “the other side,” this site strives to present stories with a point of view informed by context, serious reporting, and a deep understanding of the issues I cover. As someone who came up in the old alt-weekly tradition, I don’t hide my opinions on certain issues in subtext—it says “urbanism” right there at the top of the site—but I come to those views through a dedication to nuanced reporting and openness to many points of view, and it’s my opinion that we need more of that as our nation, and city, enter very uncertain times. If you agree, please consider contributing as generously as you’re able, and if you’re already a contributor, consider increasing your monthly contribution. Thank you so much for reading, and I’ll see you back here next week.

Mami Hara’s huge unsolicited raise needs to be vigorously challenged. It is yet another example of extreme over-compensation, which is endemic in our country. It’s one thing when tech companies pay outsize salaries, but public servants should not be part of this dynamic. I believe that extreme over-compensation is the primary cause of homelessness, especially when it’s combined with a culture of paying much less than the cost of living for all the jobs that make life comfortable for the overcompensated. These high incomes are pushing the people who serve them out of the city to the hinterlands.